


Camp

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Pushing Daisies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-20
Updated: 2008-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:41:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1639439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tent pegs, meteors and comedy vegetables collide as Ned, Chuck and Olive investigate a travelling talent show.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Camp

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks (and apologies) to Bryan Fuller for creating this marvellous show, plus Pearbean and Calliope for the moral support.
> 
> Written for austen

 

 

Twelve years, ten hours, two minutes and twelve seconds ago, at the Longborough Woods Outdoor Pursuits Retreat, young (but not so young) Ned was staring up at the stars on a clear, chilly winter's night.

The Board of the Longborough School For Boys, having an elegant sufficiency of surplus funds and a troubling lack of worthwhile investments, had decided that it would be a test of character to send their charges out into the wilds of the local woodlands for a week. The week, so they were told, would be a chance to revel in the freedom of the outside world. A chance to build fires, learn to fish and do all the wonderful things that boys should learn to do. Most importantly, a chance for the majority of the teaching staff to get very, very drunk without their wayward charges loitering underfoot.

The piemaker-to-be was not thrilled to be out in the wilds. The fragile local ecosystem was already threatened enough by the modern world without the impact of a gangly teenager accidentally bringing deceased fauna back to life with a single touch. More selfishly, there was little chance for Ned to escape from his fellow students or the watchful eye of the Outdoor Pursuits instructors, who were slightly confused as to how to teach the Longboroughans to fish when the lakes were mostly frozen over.

Little chance except at night, as young Ned snuck out of his tent and away from the hordes of snoring classmates. With Digby keeping stealthy watch from the shadows in case of emergency, Ned left his canine custodian and found a secluded spot he had picked out earlier. Taking care to keep himself covered as much as possible, and with his coat rolled up to keep his head off the ground, Ned lay himself down to think.

Gazing up at the balls of gas twinkling merrily in the sky, Ned could not help but think of his mother. Although he had brought so many things back to life since she died and then re-died, frogs and leaves were hardly the most talkative of creatures, and Ned occasionally wondered whether there was, indeed, somewhere that the dead went when they passed on, and particularly if his mother had found somewhere pleasant to go.

Seven years, seven hours and twelve minutes prior to this, during a particularly rigorous class in religious instruction, young Ned had come to the conclusion that there was somewhere "above" that good people like his mother went. The logical consequence of this major decision was that he would need to become an astronaut to see her again - and given that she had died twice, he would probably have to go twice as far into space to do so. In Ned's ten year old mind, this involved scrounging discarded cardboard boxes from textbook deliveries to the Longborough School in order to build a clandestine rocket ship in his dormitory. Using this, he intended to familiarise himself with the workings of the complicated engineering systems he would no doubt need to master ahead well in advance so as not to delay his progression through astronaut training.

Unfortunately, a well meaning cleaner had put paid to Ned's construction process, and an experience with freeze-dried ice cream convinced the budding piemaker that he preferred to stay Earth-bound and stick to just the one out-of-this-world experience. Nevertheless, as he gazed skywards he still imagined that one of the stars could be his mother, staring straight back at him across the cosmos.

Ned was not the only boy thinking of celestial bodies, however. For the Longborough School for Boys was much like any other boarding school, and the closeted environment meant that emotions were always running high. Eugene Mulchandani, Ned's co-conspirator in rocket physics amongst so many other endeavors, had always been such good friends with the young piemaker because neither of them had quite fit in. However, for Eugene, no longer shackled by corrective braces, the difference had been more mundane than being able to re-animate the dead, and as Ned returned to their shared tent Eugene decided that this would be the evening to make this clear, much to Ned's surprise and slight confusion.

\---

Now, twelve years fourteen hours later, the only hole that the fully-fledged piemaker was concerned about was the Pie Hole. The winter season always brought more custom to Ned's door, and his particular specialty was the British mince pie, served in varying shapes and sizes to bring festive cheer to even the tiniest of Tims. 

Chuck leant on the work table in the kitchen, her feet thudding against the stainless steel as she idly kicked against it. "I'm worried for you, Ned, and worrying for you is worrying for me so that's worry with a double you. I mean, sure, it's the festive season, and you've got the Comfort Food Cook-Off coming up and I know it's going to take a lot of preparation, but even so you're working flat out, and pies should never be flat."

Ned moved in a flurry of cooking activity. "Running a pie restaurant is a niche industry; although there's no competition there's also little interest which means I have to spend every spare hour balancing the accounts, ordering new supplies, checking on how the fruit is - "; a furtive whisper - "festering, everything that there isn't time to do while I'm in the kitchen baking." Sugar jittered across the work surface as Ned dusted the mince cup pies.

Olive Snook tottered into the kitchen, perched on precarious heels that barely supported her petite pins. "Well, if you weren't so self-absorbed you'd see that Ned spends most of his time catering to your every whim - when he isn't catering for our customers or cooking the books." Olive laughed at her own pun in a small, wistful snort, as even catching sight of the piemaker was still enough to cook her own books until they were burnt for heresy.

"You know, that's an excellent point well made, however archly put. In all the time we've been together you never seem to do anything except look after me, and while that's sweet and all I'm just concerned that there's...well, nothing else. What did you do before you did me?"

Ned loved that Chuck was so genuinely concerned for him, but privately her quizzical look set him slightly on edge. He liked his comfort zone comfortable, with a metaphorical sofa you could sink into and all the grooves in the right places, and this conversation was going to force well-meaning splinters into the heiney of Ned's happy place.

His mouth worked slightly, his eyebrows furrowing as if searching for a way to extricate himself from this situation inside the deepest recesses of his nose. "I...I...think it's time for me to suddenly become very busy tending to our customers because Olive now needs to go on her lunch break half an hour after opening and Chuck should watch the ovens so obviously I cannot stay and answer your totally reasonable and yet unnervingly penetrating questions, so... goodbye." The piemaker scuttled out of the kitchen, a frantic cloud of flour behind him and no fixed destination ahead.

The two ladies watched Ned flee with only a hint of confusion on their faces. They were used to him, after all.

"Well, that was peachy keen." Olive, a vision in incandescent and inappropriately low-cut green, glowered at her zombie rival. "Nice going."

Chuck thumped a pile of dough in frustration. "Why does he always avoid my questions about what he does with his spare time? He can't have just sat there not petting Digby all day, as delightful as that may be." The undead dog, unconcerned by the hygiene implications of wandering around a working kitchen, had curled up at Olive's feet as she entered, and Chuck did not wish to offend his canine sensibilities. If he could have spoken, he would have elucidated exactly what Ned _did_ do all day, but not only could he not do so but Digby was not sure it was fit for polite company in any case.

Ned had always owned inappropriate amounts of saran wrap, after all, even for a piemaker.

\---

Ned pulled himself into the booth where Emerson Cod, private investigator, had installed himself in a clearly agitated fashion. Being in public, Emerson had not brought his knitting with him, but something had clearly gotten his festive goose, and so he was attempting to stress-stitch the very air itself subtly. His hands twitched in tiny, phantom purling movements, and his eyes were glued to the window.

As Ned slid in with a slice of rhubarb pie, Emerson's eyes snapped to focus on the plate before him but sliding over to the piemaker. He dropped a mental stitch as his hand reached for the fork. "Don't tell me, droopy drawers, you've got more lady problems than I have follicles on my head, by which I mean _I don't care_. Of course, normally I'd love to shoot the breeze about Little Miss Muffet in there passive-aggressively coveting your cojones or whatever, but we've got more intriguing propositions of the corpse kind, and I'm in a jam."

The private investigator thrust a piece of paper towards Ned. It smelt of burning, as if it really were hot off the presses. "I'm gonna have to take a rain check on this one, and believe me I do not enjoy choosing a big ass storm over big ass bucks." Emerson sounded more forlorn than forthright for a brief moment. "Momma Cod knows just how much moolah the sacred cash cow has mooed my way this year, and she ain't gonna be happy if I don't spread that economic butter around. Momma sure loves a good Quintero...anyhoodle, I got places to be, shady sources to grease up, you know the drill."

"Pneumatically." Ned took the proffered paper. "Of course, this does mean that you're forfeiting your cut of the fee for choosing to hit the metaphorical mall of questionable legality. `tis the season to be giving, after all." The piemaker was not a shrewd businessman, but neither would he look a gift corpse in the mouth.

Emerson took several large bites of his pie. "Sure, sure, whatever tricky dinks you like, you know me, I'm one big giant cuddly heart oozing Christmas cheer out of every sainted orifice." The stress air knitting, unlike Emerson's talking, ceased during gulps of food. "Anyway, this one? Not my cup of joe. Trust me." Pushing the plate noisily aside, the PI slipped away and out the door as stealthily as a large man wearing a knitted holster and muttering in broken Spanish can.

Ned looked out the window at the chilled streets before returning his attention to the message in front of him, which Emerson appeared to have received that morning. A case would keep him occupied.

The fax (for that was what it was) was this. One Hannah Malphonia, aged thirty two years twelve days and five seconds, had been discovered face down in the middle of a road with a tent peg hammered first into her forehead, and then through her skull into the asphalt post-mortem. A note on white paper had been speared on the tent peg, and her body left to eventually be discovered by a travelling second-hand hat salesman. It had transpired that Ms Malphonia was an impressionist by trade who had entered herself for the Talented Travaillers Travelling Talent and Tent Show, a touring open-air residential contest to determine the crème de la crème of the country's skilled performers based on talent and outdoor survival skills, and it was the Travaillers themselves who had stumped up the monies necessary to hire Emerson Cod's unique services. For the note itself was most peculiar, consisting solely of three musical symbols, written on a stave. The Travaillers, being talented in running touring shows to a healthy profit and not in reading musical notation, felt the speed and expertise of a PI would help avoid any negative publicity and might get to the bottom of the matter faster than the police. To speed matters further, they had sent a facsimile of the note with their message.

"What's poopin'?" Olive had come out of the kitchen on the pretext of collecting the detritus from Emerson's visit, but the sight of the thermal paper in Ned's hands had fired her curiosity. "Papa got a brand new body bag?" she said, her head tilted to one side quizzically like a pigeon. "Gimme Cod's cut and I'll...help you out."

Again, Ned was unnerved. Every time that Olive Snook got involved in his "other" business venture, she came a little closer to uncovering the truth about lonely tourist Charlotte Charles' supposedly faked death. The image of Olive leading a mob of angry townsfolk once the truth was revealed was terrifying on multitudinous levels.

"Lemme see." Olive snatched the fax away and turned it over. "Blah blah blah tent peg blah blah blah...hey, what's this?" She looked at the musical notes and snorted derisively. "B-A-D? As if the peg in the noggin was a touch too subtle, hah!."

"I'm really not sure you should be getting involved..." Ned began.

"A talent show!" Chuck had wandered over to see what the fuss was about, and clapped her hands together in demure, womanly glee. "Who knows what kind of skulduggery could be afoot? Perhaps someone's juggling balls are filled with crack or there's a secret voodoo cabal among the psychics!" She smiled at Ned, hoping his stress had diffused somewhat. "When do we sally forth, brave sir?"

Ned was about to protest, but the sheer enthusiasm radiating from a few scant feet away was enough to overwhelm any objection he might have had. Besides, he thought, with Emerson heading to the shadiest corners of Papen County he could use the help, even if it did mean shutting up shop for a while.

"Alright ladies, you're both in." Olive and Chuck signalled their approval by waving excitedly at each other, before Olive scooched over to allow Chuck to sit down. "With Emerson elsewhere I'm chief sleuth on this one, so -"

Olive interrupted with a girlish giggle. "Oh Ned, I love it when you try to take charge of me...or generally..." She drifted off into a momentary reverie, interrupted by a sharp poke in the ribs by Chuck. The piemaker once more looked uncomfortable, and cleared his throat.

"Be that as it may, we're playing by my rules this time, and those rules are simple and number only two. One, Olive, you do NOT get to come to the morgue to look at the body, I don't think you could handle...what we do."

Olive's eyes glinted with steel. "Mister, you ain't seen nothing I ain't seen. These jockey's eyes could tell you tales to turn your blood to water."

"And that's exactly why you couldn't handle it." Ned emphasised the point with his finger to contradict the fact that it made absolutely no sense at all, and carried swiftly onwards so that Chuck could not press for more details. "Two, no unauthorised digging around in my psyche for hidden truths or helpful suggestions. When a case is as potentially complicated as this, I don't have time to be distracted by questions and queries when we should be de-criming the place, we will be busy grilling suspects and gathering evidence in the manner to which we are accustomed, okay? Now, Chuck and I will be heading to the morgue to get some forensic...stuff...done, so you should go case out the Talent Show, Olive, and get us backstage passes sorted to aid our investigations."

"Yay Olive!" Chuck attempted to cheer her friend up, mindful of her disappointment at not getting to play with the rest of the team. "You'll be our sleuthing groupie, getting all the inside scoop to dish the dirt to us poor ignorant fools later when we're done with the boring old dead body!"

"Yeah yeah, I got it," sulked Olive. "I'll be your sleupie. Just get on with it, slomos."

"Okay, let's go then. Olive, would you mind closing up after us?" Ned and Chuck were already halfway out the door.

"Sure thing, daddio." As the door jangled shut, Olive paused for thought for a moment. The thought never came, caught as she was between the thrill of the investigation and her disappointment at yet again being partially excluded from the piemaker's activities, so instead she drew herself up to her full majestically miniscule height and bellowed at the customers as she busied herself about the restaurant floor:

"Last orders, pie peeps, get your throats a-swallowing, `cause this Snook is shutting up shop!"

\---

"Where's the Cod?" The coroner was clearly disappointed. Ned shuffled awkwardly, arms crossed across his chest, whilst Chuck turned on her most dazzling smile to match her enormous sunglasses and bright yellow coat. The full solar ensemble had no effect.

"He had other...business to attend to, in one of the varying capacities that he is employed which means he always needs to see the bodies you have."

"Where's my business?" The coroner slowly stuck his right hand out and looked at Ned meaningfully.

"I...don't know what you mean, honestly, I have no idea whatsoever." Chuck opened her eyes as wide as possible as if to look hopelessly confused in support. Again, no effect.

"Mmmm hmmmmm." The coroner's level gaze somehow intensified even further. Ned shrank a little further into himself, like a very sheepish giant redwood. "Show me the dough or you don't get to do your necro-whatever in there and I go public with your sordid shenanigans."

Ned sighed sharply, unfurled his arms and plunged his hand into his pocket, withdrawing a bundle of notes that he pressed into the coroner's hands.

"Thank you for your generosity and hospitality." The coroner's monotone could have julienned diamonds.

"Okay, now we'll just be going on with our business that is in no way sordid or suspicious or shenanigan-y, thank you very much." Ned lingered momentarily giving a perfunctory, awkward wave and heading into the morgue. Chuck smiled again in a vain attempt to elicit some kind of welcoming response before following suit, closing the door into the morgue behind her.

"Sometimes, I just want to sock him in the sour puss," Chuck whispered conspiratorially as she followed Ned over to the body on the mortuary table. Ms Malphonia's head was already uncovered, the tent pole prominently protruding from her right temple with the note still attached and draped with dark brown hair that fell exotically across her face - the coroner clearly had an eye for scenic composition. In fact, she looked almost serene.

"Speaking as a fellow friend to the dead, he's just trying to do his job and make sure we stick to the rules, however extortionate said rules may be in these turbulent economic times."

"You're just scared of him, I see the way you shrink back from him when he does that "mmmm hmmmm" thing." Chuck's impersonation sounded like a cross between a donkey and an Elvis tribute artist.

Ned raised his eyebrows sternly. "Speaking again as a fellow friend to the dead, that is also very true, but now we are going to move on to the lady we came to see, yes?" 

"Roger that, boss man. Olive's right, you _are_ sexy when you take charge!"

"I do not want to think that Olive thinks that, although I like that you think that so please think on. One minute begins...now." Ned started the stop watch and gently tapped Hannah's face. Her eyes shot open and rolled around slightly before she sat up to look at Ned and Chuck.

"Hi, "said Ned. Chuck waved slightly. "Just so you know, if you couldn't tell from the peg in your head you were murdered yesterday and we were wondering if you saw who killed you?"

Hannah looked slightly confused and said nothing for a moment, panic in her eyes. The watch ticked by five seconds.

"Oh dear," Chuck was worried. "Maybe her brain's too far damaged by the thrust of that tent peg, she might have her speech centres damaged. Hannah, can you show us some other way, maybe with a mime or lots of meaningful nodding?"

Suddenly Hannah opened her mouth. Then, she began to sing. 

Unfortunately, although Hannah was an impressionist in life, she was not known for being able to imitate a tune. Nevertheless, she belted out the following in an extremely vague approximation of a very well-known melody, sounding something like a drunk cat attempting to execute a handbrake turn:

Ding dong, verily I died Oh crap, why am I singing? This peg thrust above my eye, A-heavenwards sent me winging

"AaaaaaaaAAAAAAAH oh GOD stop it now!" Ned interrupted the carolling caterwaul with a shout as Hannah Malphonia was preparing to launch into a chorus that would certainly merit disapproval, shocking the poor woman into merciful silence. "Why is she SINGING?"

Chuck removed her fingers from her ears gingerly, her face a picture of abject horror. "Phineas Gage's personality changed for the worse when a rod got blown through his head, and damage to the frontal lobes has been known to cause musical hallucinations that change with the seasons, so clearly her brain is now a Pandora's Box of Christmas aural horrors just waiting to be unleashed upon our unsuspecting ears!"

"Thirty seconds, please don't make us use them all!" Ned pleaded.

Chuck re-arranged her face so it seemed more sympathetic than disgusted. "Ms Malphonia, I'm sure you've got some last requests or wishes you want to pass on but with the very best will in the world, and I mean that whole-heartedly, I don't think I can stand to hear them, so would you please just tell us who killed you by writing what you know down in this handy notebook?" Chuck, being a lady of resource, had begun to take notes from their communications with the dead. From within the depths of her raincoat she proferred a pad and pencil to the bepegged, bothered and bewildered corpse before her.

As Ms Malphonia once again drew breath, Ned and Chuck both drew back for safety. With more than a little embarrassment, Hannah grabbed the notebook from Chuck's outstretched arms and quickly scribbled something. Chuck snatched it back and, after briefly scanning it, showed the pad to Ned, disbelief in her eyes.

"Really? It's that simple? You've named the killer on here?" A quick nod. "Thank you, Ms. Malphonia, and now we... I mean, you can be at peace again." A rapid tap, and Hannah fell back to the table with a distinctly tuneless thud as her second life fizzled away.

"Seriously? She saw AND recognised her killer? I never thought that actually happened, everyone you wake up always seems to have some cryptic comment sending us on an inevitably twisted path to the truth via hijinks and home truths. Well, this is an ass of a case to have picked up." Chuck was almost shaking with incredulity, and was certainly more than a little put out. "Where's the fun in knowing who did it?"

Ned was not put out. He was petrified. This left an awful lot of time free that he had planned to fill with investigating the crime. Now he had a feeling that there would be someone else being investigated...

\---

"Well, this is cosy."

It was what Chuck liked to call the undead of night. Not just because death was always a particularly touchy subject in Pie Hole parts, but because it truly was when undesirables and derring do-badders came out to wreak havoc among the law-abiding living. As her whole life now consistent of subterfuge and endless disguises on account of being theoretically deceased, Chuck often felt like it was the only time that she could really be free to experience the world she had wanted to see before she had been murdered.

Freedom was definitely what she wanted at this very moment.

"It would be cosier if there wasn't all this choking simmering tension thickening the air like a big cloud of metaphorical gravy." Ned was ever the cook.

"Personally, I like it here." Olive wiggled her toes slightly, sandwiched between Chuck and Ned. "I'm keeping my friend close and my other friend who I wish was closer, closer. I'm as snug as a bug in a rug."

For Olive Snook had indeed shut up shop and gone to case out the Travaillers and their peripatetic show. The erstwhile sluepie's snooping had meant that Olive made the choice to go deep undercover, and she had signed herself up to the contest with Ned and Chuck as her pseudonym-toting entourage. It was at this point that Ned and Chuck themselves had arrived to explain that they had somehow already worked out exactly who had killed Hannah Malphonia, although Olive was still a little confused as to exactly how they had done so. Nevertheless, it was too late for them to avoid going through the charade, and as competitors one of the conditions of being part of a residential talent contest was, unsurprisingly, to be resident. A check through the register had revealed no sign of the name they were looking for, so the Pie Holers had given up for the night.

And so it came to pass that Olive, Chuck and Ned had found themselves sharing a tent near to where the Travaillers had pitched up. For it turned out that eleven years six months and twelve days ago, when Olive Snook had been a young and rebellious jockey eager to escape from the chafing bit of her domineering trainer, she and her thoroughbred Arabian stallion - The Pie - had once slipped the bolt and run away to ride freely across the Papen County hills to find a new life. Together they rode, the wind streaming through Olive's mane of golden locks with the promise of something wonderful just around the next hillock. However, Olive's racing training had led her to accidentally ride The Pie around in a perfect ellipse, thus bringing her straight back to the stables from whence she had came after only one night away. She had kept both the one-woman tent she used that night and the acute embarrassment stored away - that is, until this very moment.

Ned had curled himself up into as tiny a ball as possible inside his sleeping bag, and was facing away from both ladies. A night under canvas brought back unfortunate enough memories as it was anyway, and this time there was the added bonus of a homicidal maniac with a yen for staking potentially wandering the campsite waiting to do away with them all. Oh, how desperately he wanted to hold Chuck for reassurance that all would be well! As Olive believed that the reason they could not touch was due to an allergy, however, they could not afford any close proximity - not even through sleeping bags - and so they had volunteered her to be Pigby in the middle, as it were.

"Oh, lookit!" Olive really was enjoying this far too much. "There's a little hole in the tent where The Pie got peckish all those years ago! We can see the stars from here!" As Olive pointed this out she jabbed Chuck in the face with her elbow as she attempted to adjust for the lack of space. Chuck masked her annoyance by biting into her sleeping bag.

"You know, when I was a little girl, I never used to watch the stars." Olive's tone had softened a little. "I always thought it was a waste of time to be daydreaming over what might be out there when there was so much out _here_ that I knew I could get if I just worked at it. Plus, when you decide to become a jockey you only ever really focus on what's straight ahead or straight under you, it comes with the saddle. But now I'm a little bit older and much less wiser I look at the stars and I think -opportunity! Potential! Stuff that's out there and you _know_ it's out there if only someone would search really, really hard with, say, the Hubble Telescope with a big magnifying glass on top kind of hard, then _they'd_ know too and they could _share_ it with you..."

Chuck headed Olive's monologue off at the pass, knowing all too well where it was going and not wanting to get further annoyed. "I always feel a little melancholy when I look at the night sky. I think of all the things that could be and I'm happy, but then I think of all the things that have been and are so far gone that I've got no hope of recapturing them again because the past has gone supernova while I wasn't looking. I don't think it's any bad thing to look to the future, Olive, I think it's a positive step towards building a bigger brighter you. I say be ambitious, I say _carpe stellas_!"

"I say don't touch the enormous firey balls of gas as you'll get horribly burned and have to spend the rest of your life nursing your wounds from behind giant bandages. Space is void and vacuum, a whole lot of nothing but emptiness and solitude that gets you nowhere but Planet Disillusionment orbited by a moon of sadness." Ned's outburst was sudden but quiet.

Chuck rolled to look at her beloved, nearly squashing Olive in the process. "Oh Ned, why don't you have any dreams or aspirations any more? Ever since I met you again my own dreams have all become so much brighter and vivid and I've finally got the chance to go out and do all things I've ever wanted, and you just want to withdraw into your own personal pie world."

"Dreams are fleeting and ephemeral, passing you by like tiny meteors. Every time I ever had a dream of doing something other than baking pies cruel circumstance conspires against me, so I stick to doing what I do well and I've learnt to like it. I know you think I'm unambitious and need a hobby or a goal for the future beyond just living in the moment, but I'm safe, I'm generally okay with my life and I would hope that you would be too as you're a really big part of it now."

"Exactly! I was a meteor, I crash landed on Planet Ned and hope I brought some extraterrestrial joy to it, but I can't be the only one that brings something new into your life, you've got to do something for yourself once in a while or circumstance will mean you end up without having the life you really deserve. You're a great man, Ned, and you could achieve so much if you just put your mind to it rather than winding yourself up into a corkscrew of neuroses and phobias just waiting to explode!"

Silence fell for what seemed like an eternity. Olive Snook was desperately uncomfortable now, both physically and emotionally. She piped up in a small voice "What dy'all think about a group hug by proxy right now?"

"That would be nice." Ned's voice was even smaller.

Ned and Chuck turned back to look at each other across Olive, with regret shining from every pore. They both rolled in towards Olive and, as far as the constrictions of their sleeping bags would allow it, "hugged" each other via the medium of Snook.

All three lay there, emotionally relieved if outwardly still a little frosty. Chuck thought of how glad she was that she had Ned to give her a second chance at living, and how much she wanted to help _him_ live too; Ned reflected on how glad he was that Chuck had been that passing meteorite, and how he knew she was right even if it scared him; and Olive realised that sometimes a little discomfort was worth its rewards, her heart swelling with internal song.

It was at this point that a homicidal maniac with a yen for staking ripped their way through the canvas of the tent, screaming wildly. The screaming from Ned, Chuck, and Olive, on the other hand, was much more controlled.

\---

"It's you! You killed Hannah Malphonia and now you've come to off the rest of the competition!" Olive was babbling slightly in terror, as she realised that being wedged between two people in a sleeping bag and being menaced by a peg-wielding sociopath was not an easy situation to escape from.

"Well, if it isn't Patti Boots, Kitty Pimms, and _Fred_." The murderer snarled and mysteriously produced three tent pegs out of nowhere, displayed between the fingers of her left hand is if she were a ninja girl scout. Olive's cheeks colored, as she was ashamed both at the fact that the murderer had been able to find out their identities and also at her unoriginality in coming up with nom-de-plumes. "I've been eavesdropping on you for the past five minutes waiting to snuff out your competition, and now I've got the chance."

The facts were these. The murderer was Felicia Fitz-Friskee, aged twenty-eight years six months and fifteen days. A competitive spirit had been installed in her from a young age by her father, a champion novelty vegetable cultivator. Following in her parental footsteps, Felicia had thought herself certain to win the Papen County Pageant at the age of fourteen with an artichoke that bore more than a passing resemblance to Benjamin Franklin. However, she was cruelly pipped to the post by her arch-rival, Maevia Mannish, with her selection of carrots in the shape of the Scandinavian territories.

Enraged by her defeat, Felicia swore vengeance on all those who might stand between her and victory at any cost. Her first act of revenge was to boil and mash Maevia's prize-winning carrots, but from there her mania escalated further into full blown psychosis.

"We know you killed Hannah Malphonia, Felicia!" Chuck attempted to quell the quavering in her voice. "But why kill someone in a contest you're not even taking part in?"

"It makes perfect sense. " Felicia did not, unfortunately, make perfect sense. "I can't take part because then I might lose. But if I kill everyone involved then no-one will win! It's so elegant!" Someone loudly shushed Felicia from a nearby tent, but made no attempt to come to the rescue.

"But you don't even know what my talent is! And how do you know our strange names?" Olive was furious at being outfoxed by a weasel such as Felicia.

"Talent, schmalent, it doesn't matter. I'm just a random sociopath, really - I just happened to go to school with Hannah, and when I heard about her attempts to make it big in the impressionist world I knew I had to strike hard and fast. The note was just a little bit of fun, I knew full well that she was a god-awful singer so I thought I'd highlight her complete lack of talent in death. Plus I know your names because I read the register, dummies, same as you did. Anyway, enough chit-chat. I'm acting on the spur of the moment, and this moment is well and truly spurred. Adios, muchachas!"

As Felicia drew her hand back, ready to fling her deadly skewers, Ned was overcome by anger. "I don't know what your problem is with competition, you mindless witch, but you can't go around murdering people who want their chance at regional glory like this. I may not have dreams of my own, but I'll be damned if you're going to ruin anyone's else's tonight!"

Struggling to his feet inside the comfy confines of his sleeping bag, Ned began what can only be described as a guttural roar. Coming from such a gentle man this was startling enough for Olive and Chuck, but for Felicia, caught up in her own deluded mental state, it was doubly so, and she was thrown off guard. Ned launched himself like a six foot tall caterpillar at their would-be assailant, a snarling face swaddled in a comforter of righteousness, and barrelled into Felicia's chest, knocking her for sixteen and sending her crashing to the ground.

"Ned? NED!" Chuck and Olive wriggled forward out of the ruins of the tent. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine!" came the slightly bruised shout. Felicia was no longer moving, apparently knocked unconscious, and was bleeding from where she had accidentally stabbed herself in the leg as she fell. "I'll be even better when my adrenaline levels are back to normal. Um... can someone unzip me? I seem to have got my hands stuck."

\---

Three hours and four minutes later, Ned and Chuck sat alone together on top of the apartment building, their legs dangling over the side of the roof. Upon claiming the reward money from the Travaillers (who were completely perplexed about the whole thing, having no idea that the Pie Holers had even arrived yet), they had returned to the home to no sign of Emerson (who, it transpired, was at that precise moment engaged in a high-stakes game of snap with his Colombian cigar suppliers, a fact he would never reveal to anyone). Olive, exhausted by the day's sleuthing and filled with fantasies after the evening's tented encounters, had already gone to bed, and so the piemaker and the girl he loved were sat up looking at the late night sky, their hands kept warm with thick gloves. Chuck's beehives were once more covered with bee-cosies for the winter season, and everything was quiet except the very faintest hum of traffic in the distance.

"You were so brave tonight, Ned. Foolhardy, sure, but a little bit of spontaneous stupidity never goes amiss when you're trapped by a madwoman with tent pegs."

"I'm not really at ease with this whole spontaneity thing, and now I just feel like kind of a hypocritical doofus." Ned looked out towards the horizon. "When I went at Felicia tonight, all I could think about was what you said about dreams and ambitions and how if she'd shish-kebabed us you wouldn't have gotten the chance to do everything you wanted to do, and then I realised that...I wanted to do all those things with you. Look, the reason I never tell you what I used to do with my time was because I never really did _anything_ except sit around and wallow in sadness and loneliness and other kinds of nesses that aren't really healthy to dwell on, and now I like the fact that you fill up all my time."

"Oh Ned, that's so sweet of you. But you can't just live your life through me, you never know when you might accidentally touch me or if things go wrong..."

"Are things going wrong?"

"Of course not, Ned, I love you just as much as ever, with the brilliance and passion of a hundred thousand constellations, but I can't live life for both of us. That's why I moved in with Olive, remember?" Chuck held Ned's begloved hand. "I just worry that you're always going to be looking out for me when you should be looking out for number one sometimes. You never know when that next meteor is going to pass by and if you miss the ride you might regret it forever."

A comet shot past on the sky. "You should make a wish, Chuck." Ned said fondly, squeezing her glove in return. "I know what I want."

As they both wished on the shooting star, it would have saddened the piemaker to know that Charlotte Charles did not wish for exactly the same thing he did - that they could touch freely and easily without Chuck dying once more. As they left the roof glove in glove, snuggled into each other's extremely thick winter coats, Chuck turned back to look at the night sky once more briefly before heading inside, and hoped her wish would rocket through space and onwards, past the stars burning brightly in the firmament and on towards the end of time and space.

She wished Ned would be happier. 

 


End file.
